Is it Necessary or Advisable to Shot Peen Ploished Ford Factory Rods?

[WConley]

An old racing friend, Gordon Payne, also a Ford engineer, had told me a few of the 3.8L crankshaft mis-adventures. I seem to recall that he said that once the decision was made to switch to forged cranks, in the interest of expediency, Ford farmed production out to an off-shore supplier; I may have that part confused with one of his many other work stories.

Yes they had to source the crank forging from Japan.  It was an embarrassment, because no US supplier had the capacity at the time.  I can't remember the exact supplier - may have been Mitsubishi.

[WConley]

This is again off topic. I have a SC, it was a great car while it ran. Most power and the best gas mileage of the 3 T-Birds I had. My issue with it was it gulped antifreeze and ruin the bearings, twice (I bought that way to begin with but, didn't know why the bearing were out). I understand that even the 4.2 version of the V6 does the same thing. What's with that?

I was impressed with the forged crank but, why did they put in that odd main bearing journal?

I wasn't on that design team, but I did work on (struggle with) head gaskets in the early 90's.  We got the mandate that all asbestos had to be eliminated from head gaskets.  It turns out that asbestos was covering a lot of sins in the old engine designs...  The replacement materials such as graphite just didn't cut it on the older engines.  Multi-layer steel needed much finer surface finishes and more consistent clamp load than what you could get on the old stuff, so that was out.  (Many new engines are using multi layer steel now...)

The 3.8L was an iron block / aluminum head combo so it was super hard on head gaskets.  After deep thermal shock tests on the dyno, you could see the head gasket getting abraded away from the differential expansion.  I bet you were leaking coolant into an oil return...

The 3.8L block was originally supposed to be aluminum.  That was before my time (early 80's), but they found that the aluminum blocks would literally fall in half during dyno testing.  Management just punted and tweaked the block tooling for cast iron.  I wonder if the offset bearing shells are a by-product of those tooling tweaks.  Not sure on that one...

Sorry this got so far off the rails, but it does speak to the idea that factory parts (like rods) can be far from perfect!  I wouldn't hang my hat on OEM quality control vs aftermarket either.  I was a foreman at an engine plant, so I've seen things 

[BattlestarGalactic]

Anyway my Eagle rod held in there even though the bearing had almost disintegrated and it looks like the rod had probably been red hot by the discoloration. Would a stock have held up to that, I don't know but I think this rod took a lot of abuse.   

I need to find the pictures of my old 428 that came unglued back in 2000.  Those Eagle rods held on for DEAR life.  Stuff was blowing apart in large chunks, but those rods held onto that crank with everything they could.  They were twisted, bent, heads of bolts ground off, but they were still attached to the pieces of crank and all 8 pistons.

I doubt a stock rod would do that.

[Rory428]

Years ago, I ran a 390 in my Fairmont, with a 175 HP Nitrous kit. It ran pretty well, until the 105 block ripped out all the  webbing away, between the cam & crank bores. The 390 crank broke in 5 pieces, the oil pan rails were bulged out enough that I couldn

[CV355]

Sorry this got so far off the rails, but it does speak to the idea that factory parts (like rods) can be far from perfect!  I wouldn't hang my hat on OEM quality control vs aftermarket either.  I was a foreman at an engine plant, so I've seen things 

Ohh I've seen some things myself...  I can't mention the manufacturers, but during my career as an engineer, I've had to point out major design flaws to several automakers.  I don't mean the typical "Hey make this minor change for manufacturability," no, that's common.  I mean the "Hey, this is entirely wrong, the manufacturing method you are calling for is not the right approach and you will likely face a recall over this..." 

   

[Barry_R]

Ohh I've seen some things myself...  I can't mention the manufacturers, but during my career as an engineer, I've had to point out major design flaws to several automakers.  I don't mean the typical "Hey make this minor change for manufacturability," no, that's common.  I mean the "Hey, this is entirely wrong, the manufacturing method you are calling for is not the right approach and you will likely face a recall over this..." 

Like in the late '90's when we were doing an aftermarket replacement piston for the then fairly new LS1 engines?
We got a few current (at the time) piston samples and I handed one to my piston product guy - a 60ish year old Sealed Power veteran.
He picked it up, glanced at it - and instantly said "this can't possibly work - it will have huge oil consumption issues".  The oil ring return scallops were completely covered by the lower oil ring rail.  Looked like they initially designed it for a reduced radial wall oil ring and then went to SAE "D" wall package without deepening the scallops.  Oil had no where to go.

Of course they had an oil consumption warranty issue break into the news media shortly after....

[Katz427]

Thank you Barry! The place I worked for once, was getting many complaints, oil usage, LS motors, some were like 600 miles to a quart of oil. Re - honing and rings didn't help. I always wondered what they could have possibly done wrong. Makes sense.

[gt350hr]

This is again off topic. I have a SC, it was a great car while it ran. Most power and the best gas mileage of the 3 T-Birds I had. My issue with it was it gulped antifreeze and ruin the bearings, twice (I bought that way to begin with but, didn't know why the bearing were out). I understand that even the 4.2 version of the V6 does the same thing. What's with that?

I was impressed with the forged crank but, why did they put in that odd main bearing journal?

I wasn't on that design team, but I did work on (struggle with) head gaskets in the early 90's.  We got the mandate that all asbestos had to be eliminated from head gaskets.  It turns out that asbestos was covering a lot of sins in the old engine designs...  The replacement materials such as graphite just didn't cut it on the older engines.  Multi-layer steel needed much finer surface finishes and more consistent clamp load than what you could get on the old stuff, so that was out.  (Many new engines are using multi layer steel now...)

The 3.8L was an iron block / aluminum head combo so it was super hard on head gaskets.  After deep thermal shock tests on the dyno, you could see the head gasket getting abraded away from the differential expansion.  I bet you were leaking coolant into an oil return...

The 3.8L block was originally supposed to be aluminum.  That was before my time (early 80's), but they found that the aluminum blocks would literally fall in half during dyno testing.  Management just punted and tweaked the block tooling for cast iron.  I wonder if the offset bearing shells are a by-product of those tooling tweaks.  Not sure on that one...

Sorry this got so far off the rails, but it does speak to the idea that factory parts (like rods) can be far from perfect!  I wouldn't hang my hat on OEM quality control vs aftermarket either.  I was a foreman at an engine plant, so I've seen things 

   The water jacket on the end (3and4) was so close to the bore that the gasket blew there all the time , especially on the SC.
   Randy

[Barry_R]

This is again off topic. I have a SC, it was a great car while it ran. Most power and the best gas mileage of the 3 T-Birds I had. My issue with it was it gulped antifreeze and ruin the bearings, twice (I bought that way to begin with but, didn't know why the bearing were out). I understand that even the 4.2 version of the V6 does the same thing. What's with that?

I was impressed with the forged crank but, why did they put in that odd main bearing journal?

I wasn't on that design team, but I did work on (struggle with) head gaskets in the early 90's.  We got the mandate that all asbestos had to be eliminated from head gaskets.  It turns out that asbestos was covering a lot of sins in the old engine designs...  The replacement materials such as graphite just didn't cut it on the older engines.  Multi-layer steel needed much finer surface finishes and more consistent clamp load than what you could get on the old stuff, so that was out.  (Many new engines are using multi layer steel now...)

The 3.8L was an iron block / aluminum head combo so it was super hard on head gaskets.  After deep thermal shock tests on the dyno, you could see the head gasket getting abraded away from the differential expansion.  I bet you were leaking coolant into an oil return...

The 3.8L block was originally supposed to be aluminum.  That was before my time (early 80's), but they found that the aluminum blocks would literally fall in half during dyno testing.  Management just punted and tweaked the block tooling for cast iron.  I wonder if the offset bearing shells are a by-product of those tooling tweaks.  Not sure on that one...

Sorry this got so far off the rails, but it does speak to the idea that factory parts (like rods) can be far from perfect!  I wouldn't hang my hat on OEM quality control vs aftermarket either.  I was a foreman at an engine plant, so I've seen things 

   The water jacket on the end (3and4) was so close to the bore that the gasket blew there all the time , especially on the SC.
   Randy

I read about all the SC issues and realize I must have been really lucky once upon a time.  Wife had a red 1989 Cougar XR7.  Same driveline as a SC T-Bird in Mercury trim.  Ran great and she really, really liked it.  After over 150,000 miles we got rid of it when she was about to have our first kid - could not get into the car anymore around the large seat bolsters.  Turns out that the car was really rare compared to the SC...

[frnkeore]

I've kept my SC, it's low mileage and I know it will be worth something, in the future. It still has the blown gasket. I thought about replacing the short block, with a 4.2 but, I found they have the same problem.

It's curious that they produced this engine, from '82, until 2008 (26 yrs) and not fixed the problem!

BTW, I love the seats! The best I've ever seen in a production car.

[WConley]

It's curious that they produced this engine, from '82, until 2008 (26 yrs) and not fixed the problem!

The answer comes down to money.  The basic 3.8 / 4.2 engine architecture had some serious flaws that were baked into hundreds of millions of dollars in tooling / production equipment. 

Pushrod engines were deemed a dead-end for meeting future emissions and fuel economy targets by the time I was there.  Money was spent on new engine families instead of fixing the old ones.

[gt350hr]

   Frank,
     "To me" the solution on the 3.8SC was to "post" the end of the head. Ron a set screw in from the outside through the water jacket to keep the combustion chamber wall from lifting. We used to do the Cleveland heads the same way. Just touching ( cold) was enough to stop losing gaskets on a 13+-1 351C Pro Stock engine.

[plovett]

My opinion is that the 3.8 is one of Ford's worst engines ever.  They tried to copy a good engine design (Buick 3.8 ), but got lost on the path to mediocrity.   

I would take a 3.0 Vulcan engine over it any day.

JMO,

paulie

[C8OZ]

Not to take this further into the weeds...

But I'll also be forever grateful to the 3.8 SC for generating a supply of Eaton M90s available for disposal/afterhours R&D. Otherwise I would have never guessed how rowdy a 200 six can be in a 62 Falcon.

[frnkeore]

Thank you, Randy. I'll look into that.